The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come movie soundtrack, which somebody remarked is really the only essential movie soundtrack out there:

Ah Friday. Ah e-mail day…

Hi David- I see you’re the CRM guy over at TMCNet and thought you might be interested in some news from one of my clients…

eGain, the Silicon Valley based pioneer of online customer support software (www.egain.com), is announcing its newest product suite on October 30th.

As you know, the mindset of today’s consumers is changing – they are embracing the speed and collaboration elements of the Web 2.0 world and demanding much more from their interactions with their favorite brands. eGain, the Silicon Valley based pioneer of online customer support software (www.egain.com) has developed a new software suite directly aimed at helping companies successfully service their evolving customer, which will be announced on October 30th.

The reality is that brand loyalty is shaped more by superior customer service than by product differentiation or price. The sheer number of potential “service” touch points companies now have with their customers – all the traditional methods plus SMS, co-browse, chat, etc -- and the rise of outsourcing, have added even greater complexity to the customer-vendor interaction.

…

Hi David,

I read your news story on Validar Corporation and their interactive marketing campaign and event measurement software. I wanted to let you know that The Global Executive Companies has been doing this for years! We have our own proprietary technologies specifically geared to the events business, which our clients rave about.

Please take a moment and visit 2 of our websites: www.globalexec.com which describes our company, www.etouches.com which describes our technologies. I will caution, however, that both sites are currently undergoing a rebranding and not all the flash/demo/descriptive information is up on site.

…

Hi David,

Seeing that Fridays are always slow for news content, perhaps you can use the attached research report to give us an advancer on next week’s Oracle OpenWorld conference.

Glad to:

Oracle will host its OpenWorld conference and first analyst day since January 2005 in two weeks. They anticipate "several partnership announcements" alongside ongoing messaging of its infrastructure products interoperability, possibly including announced Level 1 and Level 2 support of Linux, a good Deutsche Bank analyst's report says: "We expect the day to serve as a positive stock catalyst."

DB expects questions to focus on applications and growth: "We believe Applications Unlimited has compelled many customers to reinvest in the acquired legacy applications (via users, extensions, site rollouts, etc.)," although as the analysis point out, "organic license growth is likely around 10 percent," as opposed to the 47 percent reported in 1Q.

What the Bank's analysts really expect to see Oracle focus on is interoperability for its infrastructure products "as the company attempts to gain data center share within customers." Specifically, the analysts say, "our checks suggest that the company will announce Level 1 and Level 2 support of Linux. We note that the interoperability messaging, via open standards and less proprietary architectures, will likely remain a centerpiece of database, middleware, and BI messaging in an attempt to ease customer concerns of vendor lock-in while competing with best-of-breed vendors such as BEA Systems and Cognos."

Of course the recent IBM partnership will be a big topic at OpenWorld. If you missed it, IBM, Oracle and i-flex announced last week that the companies will collaborate to provide joint banking customers with infrastructure, services, and support for enterprise applications, core banking, and risk management.

The banking collaboration will combine the business and IT architectural leadership of IBM in banks, banking-specific application solutions from Oracle, and core banking and risk solutions from i-flex, officials from all three companies say. This combination is expected to help banks already using CRM, Core Transaction Processing, Risk, Analytics and Corporate Operations products. Under the companies' banking alliance, IBM plans to expand its services with Oracle and i-flex to help ensure integration and support for IBM platforms.

"With our expanded set of applications for the banking enterprise, Oracle is teaming with IBM to deliver what customers want most -- integrated solutions to their business problems," said David Sardilli, Senior Vice President, Global Financial Services Business Unit at Oracle. "Our currently available applications and our joint support for standards and Services Oriented Architecture provide a broad portfolio for large banks which need scale, integration, and long-term support."

There's also today's announcement of the general availability of Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise On Demand and Oracle On Demand for Siebel CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

Billed as giving customers "choice and flexibility," the new services are said by Oracle officials to " expand the Oracle On Demand portfolio of Software as a Service and Managed Applications offerings." Oracle claims to be the "only software company to offer a complete range of On Demand services across its software products; including subscription-based solutions, managed applications, hosting, and software management services."

"These new offerings help assure Siebel and PeopleSoft users that Oracle will continue to support their investments," said Sheryl Kingstone, director, Enterprise Applications and Mobility Strategies, Yankee Group.

…

QuestionPro, a vendor of online survey services, is now available as a certified application on salesforce.com's AppExchange. It's used to measure the satisfaction of existing customers, test the reception of products and services on prospects, or conduct general market research to quantify the strengths and weaknesses of their brand and that of their competitors.

QuestionPro for AppExchange "brings together two important systems for managing customer data -- CRM and surveying," according to company officials. It allows complete survey customization, where survey data collected via QuestionPro can be integrated into Salesforce dashboard reports, such as customer satisfaction sorted by region or satisfaction sorted by support representative.

"Online survey services are among the top business application requests from our customer base," said Matt Holleran, vice president, AppExchange partners, salesforce.com.

The product is designed as a way to integrate customer surveys with salesforce.com's suite of on-demand CRM applications. Responses collected via QuestionPro.com surveys are automatically posted to a custom Survey object in Salesforce.

After developing the survey using QuestionPro's web-based wizard interface, a link is provided with custom variables for email campaigns within Salesforce. The link contains an ID for the survey hosted at QuestionPro as well as an ID for the Salesforce object that a customer would like to integrate. Using this link, they can send invitations to contacts in Salesforce to take a survey.